10.19.2012

Update

Eco Gems is in Brazil until the 5th of November...more gems from then!

10.18.2012

Gem of the day

Why aren't more defence and counterterrorism analogies used in marketing and PR? Obvious answers aside, this HBR article unintentionally proves just how wrong that approach is:

"No longer passive audiences, [consumers] can organize to overturn even the most strategic initiatives. The result is a fundamental change that has put executive teams and board directors on high alert...We call this new dynamic 'customer insurgency'...how can organizations adapt to consumers armed with inexpensive weapons of mass collaboration? [...] Create your own volunteer army, and reduce the space for would-be insurgents to gain footing."

That's right, use corporate communications to silence or delegitimize what customers say. Because in the short term it's much easier than redesigning business to create value beyond profit.

10.16.2012

Gem of the day

Conditions for offshore drilling and exploration in the Arctic are difficult - and even more so when your peers set the bar so laughably low for competence.

So what's Statoil's strategy, given that they intend to have a "strong focus" in the region?

"Memoranda of Understanding with various reputable institutions have been signed to learn and widen our expertise. Agreements range from UNEP Grid Arendal, Murmansk and Arkhangelsk Oblast to the Sami University College in Kautokeino and others."

This kind of tactical engagement for reputation must be what CEO Helge Lund is hoping will make his statement a reality:

"We see no long-term conflict between the interests of our owners and society’s expectations."


10.15.2012

Another non-environmental wonder

Only the Economist would describe the financial system this way:

"Financial institutions are vulnerable to investigation, prosecution and litigation from every direction."

Or this way:

"If banks once did banking, now they practise law."

That must be why the leadership of banks have survived the financial crisis that crippled the global economy without a single prosecution.

10.09.2012

Gem of the day

Was Deepwater Horizon a 'black swan' event? Unsurprisingly, not even BP can make up their own minds about that:
  • CEO Bob Dudley says no: "It would be a mistake to dismiss our experience of last year simply as a black swan, a one-in-a-million occurrence that carries no wider application for the industry as a whole," he told an industry conference in March.
  • EVP and Group Chief of Staff Dev Sanyal says yes: "Nassim Nicholas Taleb – the writer, academic and trader – defines a Black Swan as an event that occurs outside the realm of regular expectations...And BP – as you know – experienced such an event with the accident two years ago in the Gulf of Mexico resulting in 11 fatalities. It was a tragic accident and one that we deeply regret," he said at a symposium in May.
That must be the kind of cognitive dissonance BP is talking about when they define "what BP is looking for" on their global careers website:

"BP is an organisation as diverse as it is distinct."

Another non-environmental wonder

After a summer of over-the-top police aggression moments that felt more like the 1960s than 2012, one police force is making some changes. That's right, the Milwaukee Police Department is rebranding itself. A new, flashy website features images like the one below.


Great news. Because when I look at American police forces, the number one thing that clearly needs to change is their reputation.



10.05.2012

Gem of the day

Integrating sustainability risks into decisionmaking is one of the most critical, but most complicated, challenges we face. After all, it's pretty clear that the system in place for publicly listed corporations and investors to deal with financial risks is a gross failure (see here, here and here). Regulators are constantly behind the curve trying to figure out where tomorrow's crisis is going to come from. Meanwhile, 'mutually beneficial' relationships between the big 4 accounting firms, those very regulators and the companies they are supposed to be keeping tabs on make it nearly impossible to reveal significant irregularities before they have an impact.

So why is the newly formed Sustainability Accounting Standards Board modeled after the Financial Accounting Standards Board? And what does it mean for the real task at hand: moving sustainability beyond simply 'talking the language' of the broken financial system, and making it a driver of financial transformation?

I'll leave it to HSBC Chairman Douglas Flint to reinforce that (via HSBC 2011 Sustainability Report):

"While the industry as a whole looks to reform, individual banks have their own story to tell about their role in the economy and society at large."

You can say that again.

10.04.2012

Gem of the day

Reality check of the week:

8 out of the world's top 10 biggest companies are fossil fuel companies.

The good news is most of the people at these companies have no idea what they're doing and their most strategic challengers are starting to win big.


10.02.2012

Another non-environmental wonder

Columnist Schumpeter of the Economist thinks this is a good way to sum up the influence of America on the world over the past few decades:

"America has been the world’s most important growth machine since the second world war...The machine was good for the world as well as America—it helped spread the gospel of capitalism and transform the American dream into a global dream."

In the words of novelist William Gass, "if Americans ever had a dictator they would call him Coach."

10.01.2012

Something that's actually good

Computer scientist Sandy Pentland looks at how 'Big Data' is transforming the world and what that means for traditional organizations (big business and government, are you listening?). Via hub of genius Edge.org:

"The notion that it is connections between people that is really important is key, because researchers have mostly been trying to understand things like financial bubbles using what is called Complexity Science or Web Science. But these older ways of thinking about Big Data leaves the humans out of the equation. What actually matters is how the people are connected together by the machines and how, as a whole, they create a financial market, a government, a company, and other social structures...I expect to see that organizations with hard information boundaries will tend to dissolve, because there will be competition from things that are better that don't have the hard boundaries and don't try to own your data."